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What Goes Up …

May 18, 2016
Flying ship illustrated in Francesco Lana Terzi, Prodromo (1670), from the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Call number: 1133299 noncurrent.
Flying ship illustrated in Francesco Lana Terzi, Prodromo (1670), from the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Call number: 1133299 noncurrent.

For the next 120 days or so, the elevator to the 9th floor marked “Special Collections | South Stacks” will be undergoing major repair and will thus be unavailable. We suggest two alternative routes to reach Special Collections during this period:

  • enter Memorial Library room 166, take elevator #4 to the 9th floor, then follow the signs to Special Collections

or

  • take one of the bank of 3 elevators in Memorial Library to the 7th floor, then take the stairs to the 9th floor and follow the signs to Special Collections.

If you have questions, please call Special Collections at 608-262-3243 or ask at the Circulation Desk on the 1st floor of Memorial Library.

* * *

To elevate this temporary state of affairs, we call your attention to the flying boat illustrated in the work of the 17th-century Italian Jesuit, Francesco Lana Terzi (1631-1687). In his essay on new inventions, Prodromo: Overo, saggio di alcune inventioni nuoue premesso all’arte maestra opera che prepara (Brescia: Per li Rizzardi, 1670), Lana Terzi proposed an improbable vessel with conventional sail and additional masts topped with foil spheres from which the air had been pumped.

Lana Terzi’s book figured in a large exhibit entitled “Jesuits and the Construction of Knowledge, 1540–1773” in Special Collections in 2011.